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Donald Trump's choice not to challenge a presidential immunity ruling involving civil cases attempting to hold him accountable for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, has given a green light for the lawsuits to proceed, a new analysis contends.

Trump's decision not to contest a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal ruling against him from December affects pending civil litigation brought by police officers and lawmakers who were at the U.S. Capitol during the riots, Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley writes for NBC News. The deadline to appeal passed Thursday.

Political leaders in the U.S. and around the world are expressing outrage at the death of Alexei Navalny, the 47-year old top Kremlin critic widely regarded as a Russian political prisoner who died just one day after appearing on camera from an Arctic Circle jail, reportedly "looking well and laughing during a court hearing."

"Navalny was serving a 19-year jail term on charges widely considered politically motivated," the BBC reports. "He was moved to one of Russia's toughest penal colonies late last year."

Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives have introduced a resolution that would seek to declare former President Donald Trump the winner of the 2024 presidential election — regardless of what the voters decide, reported KPNX's Brahm Resnik.

The resolution would not carry any force of law because it is not a bill, noted Resnik.

President Joe Biden took sharp aim at Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, vowing Tuesday afternoon, "I will not walk away" from the treaty alliance, while lamenting, "the whole world" heard Trump's attack on NATO.

In his live remarks from the White House's State Dining Room urging Speaker Johnson to pass the Senate's legislation that provides $95.3 billion in military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and humanitarian aid to Gaza, President Biden blasted Donald Trump's remarks supporting Putin and attacking NATO.

The U.S. Senate overnight passed critical bipartisan legislation providing military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and humanitarian aid to Gaza, in a strong 70-29 vote, including 22 Republicans despite Donald Trump's opposition to the bill. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson quickly made clear the bill will never see the light of day on the House floor.

The bipartisan bill was crafted after Senate Republicans, also at Trump's direction, killed the previous bipartisan bill, which included the military aid provisions, billions for the border, and had the support of both the Democratic Majority Leader and Republican Minority Leader, not to mention the U.S. Border Patrol union.

As he moves closer and closer to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump continues to face four criminal prosecutions and a variety of civil lawsuits. Two of the criminal prosecutions — one by special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice and the other by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for the State of Georgia — involve Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

In Willis' case, some of those indicted alongside him are attorneys who joined him in falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen — including Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is under fire from the left, and now, even from his own former Harvard constitutional law professor, after Special Counsel Robert Hur's final report on President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents included what experts say were partisan remarks about the President that violated Dept. of Justice practice.

"Merrick Garland will be one of the greatest Attorneys General in American history, bar none. As my brilliant con law student, a principled prosecutor, and later a superb DC Circuit judge, he has displayed integrity, courage, fair-mindedness, and humanity," wrote Laurence Tribe, on January 6, 2021, upon the announcement Biden would appoint Garland as the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Donald Trump's remarks that he would not only violate the United States' treaty with NATO by refusing to defend member countries if they were attacked by Russia and had not spent enough on defense, but that he would encourage President Vladimir Putin "to do whatever the hell" he wants in that situation, have sparked fears and warnings in the U.S. and in NATO countries. But one top constitutional scholar is issuing a different kind of warning: treason.

Speaking at a campaign rally in South Carolina, home to his top Republican rival and his own former UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, Trump on Saturday relayed this anecdote to supporters: "One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, 'Well, sir, if we don't pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?' I said, 'You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?' He said, 'Yes, let’s say that happened.' 'No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.'"

Special counsel Jack Smith reminded U.S. District judge Aileen Cannon that she once stopped a defendant from trying to play the same game that she has been letting Donald Trump play.

The former president's legal team has asked the judge to force the Department of Justice to turn over even more documents than the 1.3 million pages they've already received to bolster their claims the Mar-a-Lago documents case is a "selective prosecution," but Smith's team reminded Cannon she once worked on another case that limited such fishing expeditions intended to delay the trial, reported The Daily Beast.

Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in the history of the U.S. Senate, is facing increased rebellion from the far-right faction of his conference, with calls for his ouster including from one longtime GOP Senator who declared, "WE NEED NEW LEADERSHIP — NOW," and a reporter calling it a hint "at mutiny."

At issue is the bipartisan U.S. Senate border deal, months in the making, which includes funding for the southern border, a major rewrite of immigration laws, and funding for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Axios calls it "one of the harshest immigration bills of the century," and even the traditionally right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports it. The bill was crafted by hardcore conservative U.S. Sen. Jim Lankford (R-OK), hardcore liberal U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), and libertarian-leaning progressive Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). It is strongly supported by President Joe Biden, and both Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

An alarming footnote from a court-appointed financial monitor watching over Donald Trump's finances that a $48 million loan has suddenly vanished should result in the former president being called in to explain away the possibility that he may have committed another act of financial fraud.

During an appearance on "Morning Joe," MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin claimed that, short of a legitimate accounting of the loan that had been listed in the former president's financials, there may be cause for more criminal charges.

Speaking with the co-hosts she explained that "retired Judge Barbara Jones is the monitor in the case, and we're not sure if it is impacting Judge [Arthur] Engoron's decision and timing. It's a letter that points to improprieties in Trump's financial statements."

"One of the things that it points to, and maybe the thing that's most troubling about it, is for years it's been understood that one of the business entities in the Trump Organization loaned former president Trump personally $48 million," she elaborated. "According to Judge Jones in a footnote in this letter, she could never find, no matter how many times she asked, documentation of that loan and was later told, essentially, that the loan didn't exist."

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"The Trump organization lawyers, they refute that," she added. "They say the loan did exist and what we did was give Judge Jones an intra-company memo telling her that debt had been extinguished. But I've looked at that memo from December 2023: it is a memo to the file, so nobody even had the guts to sign it essentially. It just says that the debt has been extinguished. There is still, to this day, no documentation that the loan existed."

"And you might be thinking to yourself, what's the big deal about that?" she proposed. ''The big deal is if that loan did not exist and it was, instead a gift, there would be massive tax consequences to that as well as some improprieties in the financial reporting that went to Trump's financial institutions and insurance companies. In essence, a continuation of that same fraud that's been going on for years and has been showing up in his financial disclosure."

Longshot 2024 Democratic presidential contender Dean Phillips got a dressing down from MSNBC host Michael Steele who called him out for running a campaign centered on criticizing President Joe Biden.

Late in the tense interview with the congressman from Minnesota, former RNC chair Michael Steele — a Republican until Donald Trump made him abandon the party — seemed to have had enough after Phillips made a backhanded comment about finally being invited onto the network.

"The chairman in me says, what the hell are you doing? Right? And why are you doing it?" the dead serious Steele began. "Because the reality of it is, the party had a chance in 2016, and in 2020 to make a different choice. They did not choose Hillary [Clinton], and in 2020, they had Joe Biden standing in front of them along with an array of other Democratic candidates, including the current vice president, and the party said no."

"So, what makes you think after that, with an incumbent president — Joe Biden is not going anywhere, he's not stepping down —," he exclaimed as Phillips interjected, "A big mistake by the way. A big, big mistake."

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"A matter of opinion," Steele shot back, "But individuals make their choices, are making their choice to stay in the game, 97% of that 4% that turned out [in the South Carolina primary] voted for him. So the question becomes, in reality, are you creating a drain in the process, prolonging the narratives around his age, prolonging the narratives around other things that people are distracted by with Joe Biden, when the real threat is the man across the aisle in Donald Trump? And the polling shows that at the end of the day, Donald Trump is going to lose to Joe Biden."

"Second final point on that," he continued, "This is 2024, this is not 2016. It's not even 2008. A very different race, a very different electorate. Other things to keep in mind, we've already seen an indication from the base of the parties, where they want to go in '22. When a democracy threat is in front of them, the economy and other concerns take a little bit of a back-step. How do you suss all of that narrative going forward when as you tweeted, you're getting whupped?"

"Someone has got to do it," Phillips replied. "You know, my friends, I know every conversation you all have privately. It's the same one I'm having with my colleagues, which is we're dumbfounded. He's got a commanding lead in the primary — I get it. Look at the numbers, he is in a terrible position."

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